06.03.15

Despite the delays in the launch of GX, it seems Inmarsat may be looking to stitch up an even larger share of the maritime market in the near term. Rumors are flying that Inmarsat may soon make a formal bid to acquire KVH, the largest maritime VSAT player in terms of vessels (though not in revenues), adding about 3500 more terminals to Inmarsat’s existing 2200 VSAT equipped ships.

KVH generated nearly $80M from its miniVSAT business in 2014 with an average service ARPU of $1500 per month, compared to Inmarsat’s $90M and ARPU of $4000 including equipment leases (this equates to $2500 per month after stripping out hardware, according to Inmarsat’s most recent results call, which is a more appropriate point of comparison with the KVH ARPU).

The difference in ARPUs between Inmarsat’s current VSAT business and KVH is striking, in fact KVH’s smaller V3 terminal (which has about 900 active terminals) is generating around $500 in monthly ARPU, below even Inmarsat’s FleetBB ARPU of $700 (note that the standard FleetBB package sold by KVH now only provides 20 Mbytes per month of data for $749, whereas KVH offers airtime at rates as low as $0.99 per Mbyte).

If Inmarsat does move ahead with a KVH bid, it would likely be seen as a counter to Airbus’s disposal of its Vizada business unit, because Inmarsat would then have by far the largest number of VSAT-equipped ships. Indeed it would not be surprising to see attempts by competitors to block the deal on antitrust grounds, not to mention the concerns that current KVH customers will have about potential future price increases.

However, it would also be something of an acknowledgement that GX is optimally positioned as a lower end off-the-shelf maritime VSAT service (like KVH’s miniVSAT), as a step up from FleetBB, rather than as a high end solution for cruise ships and oil rigs. KVH’s growth has slowed in the last year, with terminal shipments staying at close to 1000 per year in 2012, 2013 and 2014, but net adds and ARPUs declining. Pressure from Inmarsat will only intensify, once the low cost 60cm GX antenna is available with global coverage, so this looks like it would be a good time for KVH to sell out.

Inmarsat investors will presumably also welcome a deal, with a much clearer path established to a GX maritime business of $200M+ in annual service revenues over the next few years (though its important to note this represents a retail service business, not the wholesale spend on satellite capacity). However, the obvious question that customers will ask is whether low end price packages will still be offered for miniVSAT users, or whether Inmarsat will move them up to much higher price points, as it has done with FleetBB over the last few years.

And what will be the alternative for these users: will it be other VSAT solutions, or will it be the new broadband services (comparable in capability to FleetBB) offered by Iridium’s NEXT constellation? It will take some time for either of these options to emerge, with low cost small Ku-band VSAT antennas needed for the former, and completion of the NEXT constellation needed for the latter. That provides a further motivation for Inmarsat to move sooner rather than later, while its freedom of action in the low end of the maritime market remains relatively unconstrained by competitive alternatives.

04.22.13

Its interesting to note that Inmarsat has been competing much more aggressively against key competitors in the last few months. First, I’m told that Inmarsat offered a bounty to Telemar to capture Anglo Eastern, a key Iridium Open Port customer with 350 ships, from Globe Wireless, in the fourth quarter of 2012.

All of these developments suggest that Inmarsat is determined to seek topline growth in its L-band business and is no longer reluctant (as in the past) to explicitly target its competitors with selective pricing, even though this runs counter to Inmarsat’s recent tendency to increase list prices. Of course, it is less clear whether the new deals will be profitable for Inmarsat, given the incentives needed to achieve these sales.

But with Inmarsat’s investors focused intently on whether the wholesale L-band Inmarsat Global business has returned to growth, and apparently willing to overlook the recent significant contraction in margins within Inmarsat’s Solutions business unit (blamed on a transfer of margin from retail to wholesale operations), that might not matter for now. However, if Inmarsat wants to make more acquisitions (and it is hard to see in the long term who else might end up operating LightSquared’s satellites), then regulators might wonder whether industry consolidation could give Inmarsat even more market power.